Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (7 page)

Burne, fair-haired, silent, and intent, appeared in the house only as a busy apparition, gliding in quietly at night and off again in the early morning to get up his work in the library — he was out for the Princetonian, competing furiously against forty others for the coveted first place. In December he came down with diphtheria, and some one else won the competition, but, returning to college in February, he dauntlessly went after the prize again. Necessarily, Amory’s acquaintance with him was in the way of three-minute chats, walking to and from lectures, so he failed to penetrate Burne’s one absorbing interest and find what lay beneath it.

Amory was far from contented. He missed the place he had won at St. Regis’, the being known and admired, yet Princeton stimulated him, and there were many things ahead calculated to arouse the Machiavelli latent in him, could he but insert a wedge. The upper-class clubs, concerning which he had pumped a reluctant graduate during the previous summer, excited his curiosity: Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic; Cottage, an impressive mélange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed philanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized by an honest elaboration of prep-school standards; Cap and Gown, anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant Colonial; literary Quadrangle; and the dozen others, varying in age and position.

Anything which brought an under classman into too glaring a light was labelled with the damning brand of “running it out.” The movies thrived on caustic comments, but the men who made them were generally running it out; talking of clubs was running it out; standing for anything very strongly, as, for instance, drinking parties or teetotalling, was running it out; in short, being personally conspicuous was not tolerated, and the influential man was the non-committal man, until at club elections in sophomore year every one should be sewed up in some bag for the rest of his college career.

Amory found that writing for the Nassau Literary Magazine would get him nothing, but that being on the board of the Daily Princetonian would get any one a good deal. His vague desire to do immortal acting with the English Dramatic Association faded out when he found that the most ingenious brains and talents were concentrated upon the Triangle Club, a musical comedy organization that every year took a great Christmas trip. In the meanwhile, feeling strangely alone and restless in Commons, with new desires and ambitions stirring in his mind, he let the first term go by between an envy of the embryo successes and a puzzled fretting with Kerry as to why they were not accepted immediately among the elite of the class.

Many afternoons they lounged in the windows of 12 Univee and watched the class pass to and from Commons, noting satellites already attaching themselves to the more prominent, watching the lonely grind with his hurried step and downcast eye, envying the happy security of the big school groups.

“We’re the damned middle class, that’s what!” he complained to Kerry one day as he lay stretched out on the sofa, consuming a family of Fatimas with contemplative precision.

“Well, why not? We came to Princeton so we could feel that way toward the small colleges — have it on ‘em, more self-confidence, dress better, cut a swathe — “

“Oh, it isn’t that I mind the glittering caste system,” admitted Amory. “I like having a bunch of hot cats on top, but gosh, Kerry, I’ve got to be one of them.”

“But just now, Amory, you’re only a sweaty bourgeois.”

Amory lay for a moment without speaking.

“I won’t be — long,” he said finally. “But I hate to get anywhere by working for it. I’ll show the marks, don’t you know.”

“Honorable scars.” Kerry craned his neck suddenly at the street. “There’s Langueduc, if you want to see what he looks like — and Humbird just behind.”

Amory rose dynamically and sought the windows.

“Oh,” he said, scrutinizing these worthies, “Humbird looks like a knock-out, but this Langueduc — he’s the rugged type, isn’t he? I distrust that sort. All diamonds look big in the rough.”

“Well,” said Kerry, as the excitement subsided, “you’re a literary genius. It’s up to you.”

“I wonder” — Amory paused — “if I could be. I honestly think so sometimes. That sounds like the devil, and I wouldn’t say it to anybody except you.”

“Well — go ahead. Let your hair grow and write poems like this guy D’Invilliers in the Lit.”

Amory reached lazily at a pile of magazines on the table.

“Read his latest effort?”

“Never miss ‘em. They’re rare.”

Amory glanced through the issue.

“Hello!” he said in surprise, “he’s a freshman, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen to this! My God!

  “‘A serving lady speaks:

      Black velvet trails its folds over the day,

      White tapers, prisoned in their silver frames,

      Wave their thin flames like shadows in the wind,

      Pia, Pompia, come — come away — ‘

“Now, what the devil does that mean?”

“It’s a pantry scene.”

  “‘Her toes are stiffened like a stork’s in flight;

    She’s laid upon her bed, on the white sheets,

    Her hands pressed on her smooth bust like a saint,

    Bella Cunizza, come into the light!’

“My gosh, Kerry, what in hell is it all about? I swear I don’t get him at all, and I’m a literary bird myself.”

“It’s pretty tricky,” said Kerry, “only you’ve got to think of hearses and stale milk when you read it. That isn’t as pash as some of them.”

Amory tossed the magazine on the table.

“Well,” he sighed, “I sure am up in the air. I know I’m not a regular fellow, yet I loathe anybody else that isn’t. I can’t decide whether to cultivate my mind and be a great dramatist, or to thumb my nose at the Golden Treasury and be a Princeton slicker.”

“Why decide?” suggested Kerry. “Better drift, like me. I’m going to sail into prominence on Burne’s coat-tails.”

“I can’t drift — I want to be interested. I want to pull strings, even for somebody else, or be Princetonian chairman or Triangle president. I want to be admired, Kerry.”

“You’re thinking too much about yourself.”

Amory sat up at this.

“No. I’m thinking about you, too. We’ve got to get out and mix around the class right now, when it’s fun to be a snob. I’d like to bring a sardine to the prom in June, for instance, but I wouldn’t do it unless I could be damn debonaire about it — introduce her to all the prize parlor-snakes, and the football captain, and all that simple stuff.”

“Amory,” said Kerry impatiently, “you’re just going around in a circle. If you want to be prominent, get out and try for something; if you don’t, just take it easy.” He yawned. “Come on, let’s let the smoke drift off. We’ll go down and watch football practice.”

Amory gradually accepted this point of view, decided that next fall would inaugurate his career, and relinquished himself to watching Kerry extract joy from 12 Univee.

They filled the Jewish youth’s bed with lemon pie; they put out the gas all over the house every night by blowing into the jet in Amory’s room, to the bewilderment of Mrs. Twelve and the local plumber; they set up the effects of the plebeian drunks — pictures, books, and furniture — in the bathroom, to the confusion of the pair, who hazily discovered the transposition on their return from a Trenton spree; they were disappointed beyond measure when the plebeian drunks decided to take it as a joke; they played red-dog and twenty-one and jackpot from dinner to dawn, and on the occasion of one man’s birthday persuaded him to buy sufficient champagne for a hilarious celebration. The donor of the party having remained sober, Kerry and Amory accidentally dropped him down two flights of stairs and called, shame-faced and penitent, at the infirmary all the following week.

“Say, who are all these women?” demanded Kerry one day, protesting at the size of Amory’s mail. “I’ve been looking at the postmarks lately — Farmington and Dobbs and Westover and Dana Hall — what’s the idea?”

Amory grinned.

“All from the Twin Cities.” He named them off. “There’s Marylyn De Witt — she’s pretty, got a car of her own and that’s damn convenient; there’s Sally Weatherby — she’s getting too fat; there’s Myra St. Claire, she’s an old flame, easy to kiss if you like it — “

“What line do you throw ‘em?” demanded Kerry. “I’ve tried everything, and the mad wags aren’t even afraid of me.”

“You’re the ‘nice boy’ type,” suggested Amory.

“That’s just it. Mother always feels the girl is safe if she’s with me. Honestly, it’s annoying. If I start to hold somebody’s hand, they laugh at me, and let me, just as if it wasn’t part of them. As soon as I get hold of a hand they sort of disconnect it from the rest of them.”

“Sulk,” suggested Amory. “Tell ‘em you’re wild and have ‘em reform you — go home furious — come back in half an hour — startle ‘em.”

Kerry shook his head.

“No chance. I wrote a St. Timothy girl a really loving letter last year. In one place I got rattled and said: ‘My God, how I love you!’ She took a nail scissors, clipped out the ‘My God’ and showed the rest of the letter all over school. Doesn’t work at all. I’m just ‘good old Kerry’ and all that rot.”

Amory smiled and tried to picture himself as “good old Amory.” He failed completely.

February dripped snow and rain, the cyclonic freshman mid-years passed, and life in 12 Univee continued interesting if not purposeful. Once a day Amory indulged in a club sandwich, cornflakes, and Julienne potatoes at “Joe’s,” accompanied usually by Kerry or Alec Connage. The latter was a quiet, rather aloof slicker from Hotchkiss, who lived next door and shared the same enforced singleness as Amory, due to the fact that his entire class had gone to Yale. “Joe’s” was unaesthetic and faintly unsanitary, but a limitless charge account could be opened there, a convenience that Amory appreciated. His father had been experimenting with mining stocks and, in consequence, his allowance, while liberal, was not at all what he had expected.

“Joe’s” had the additional advantage of seclusion from curious upper-class eyes, so at four each afternoon Amory, accompanied by friend or book, went up to experiment with his digestion. One day in March, finding that all the tables were occupied, he slipped into a chair opposite a freshman who bent intently over a book at the last table. They nodded briefly. For twenty minutes Amory sat consuming bacon buns and reading “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” (he had discovered Shaw quite by accident while browsing in the library during mid-years); the other freshman, also intent on his volume, meanwhile did away with a trio of chocolate malted milks.

By and by Amory’s eyes wandered curiously to his fellow-luncher’s book. He spelled out the name and title upside down — “Marpessa,” by Stephen Phillips. This meant nothing to him, his metrical education having been confined to such Sunday classics as “Come into the Garden, Maude,” and what morsels of Shakespeare and Milton had been recently forced upon him.

Moved to address his vis-a-vis, he simulated interest in his book for a moment, and then exclaimed aloud as if involuntarily:

“Ha! Great stuff!”

The other freshman looked up and Amory registered artificial embarrassment.

“Are you referring to your bacon buns?” His cracked, kindly voice went well with the large spectacles and the impression of a voluminous keenness that he gave.

“No,” Amory answered. “I was referring to Bernard Shaw.” He turned the book around in explanation.

“I’ve never read any Shaw. I’ve always meant to.” The boy paused and then continued: “Did you ever read Stephen Phillips, or do you like poetry?”

“Yes, indeed,” Amory affirmed eagerly. “I’ve never read much of Phillips, though.” (He had never heard of any Phillips except the late David Graham.)

“It’s pretty fair, I think. Of course he’s a Victorian.” They sallied into a discussion of poetry, in the course of which they introduced themselves, and Amory’s companion proved to be none other than “that awful highbrow, Thomas Parke D’Invilliers,” who signed the passionate love-poems in the Lit. He was, perhaps, nineteen, with stooped shoulders, pale blue eyes, and, as Amory could tell from his general appearance, without much conception of social competition and such phenomena of absorbing interest. Still, he liked books, and it seemed forever since Amory had met any one who did; if only that St. Paul’s crowd at the next table would not mistake
him
for a bird, too, he would enjoy the encounter tremendously. They didn’t seem to be noticing, so he let himself go, discussed books by the dozens — books he had read, read about, books he had never heard of, rattling off lists of titles with the facility of a Brentano’s clerk. D’Invilliers was partially taken in and wholly delighted. In a good-natured way he had almost decided that Princeton was one part deadly Philistines and one part deadly grinds, and to find a person who could mention Keats without stammering, yet evidently washed his hands, was rather a treat.

“Ever read any Oscar Wilde?” he asked.

“No. Who wrote it?”

“It’s a man — don’t you know?”

“Oh, surely.” A faint chord was struck in Amory’s memory. “Wasn’t the comic opera, ‘Patience,’ written about him?”

“Yes, that’s the fella. I’ve just finished a book of his, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ and I certainly wish you’d read it. You’d like it. You can borrow it if you want to.”

“Why, I’d like it a lot — thanks.”

“Don’t you want to come up to the room? I’ve got a few other books.”

Amory hesitated, glanced at the St. Paul’s group — one of them was the magnificent, exquisite Humbird — and he considered how determinate the addition of this friend would be. He never got to the stage of making them and getting rid of them — he was not hard enough for that — so he measured Thomas Parke D’Invilliers’ undoubted attractions and value against the menace of cold eyes behind tortoise-rimmed spectacles that he fancied glared from the next table.

“Yes, I’ll go.”

So he found “Dorian Gray” and the “Mystic and Somber Dolores” and the “Belle Dame sans Merci”; for a month was keen on naught else. The world became pale and interesting, and he tried hard to look at Princeton through the satiated eyes of Oscar Wilde and Swinburne — or “Fingal O’Flaherty” and “Algernon Charles,” as he called them in precieuse jest. He read enormously every night — Shaw, Chesterton, Barrie, Pinero, Yeats, Synge, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Keats, Sudermann, Robert Hugh Benson, the Savoy Operas — just a heterogeneous mixture, for he suddenly discovered that he had read nothing for years.